Sunday, January 14, 2018

"Recently I was told of an elderly woman who refuses to eat fish because she doesn’t want to eat African refugees. To me the implications are not so much gruesome as realistic: the fact that we are eating fish that well may have eaten fellow human beings is a perverse demonstration of how closely and inescapably the Europeans are tied to African refugees."~ Armin Greder

For me, the two most striking illustrations in the wordless picture book Mediterraneo (The Mediterranean) by Armin Greder, my former illustration teacher,are these –

In this image at first the play of dark against light seems almost Escher. But when you look again and take in the image slowly, you realize this is a far more complex image, the sickly undertones of purple and ochre churn into a circle of warning culminating in the ghostly waiter serving the fish.

The play of highlights lead my eyes towards the white skinned patron with a face as impassive as the dead fish being served to him.

The waiter’s hands on the plate are deathly blue, they echo the shape of the fish and the few strokes of charcoal that have constructed his presence lead my eyes up to his face, he looks sub human;

and then suddenly you realize, no one in that restaurant is quite human at all! A horror story is about to unfold.

This is a Last Supper, there is going to be betrayal and death.

And then this image -

The highlighted faces of the refugees are crisscrossed with the dashes that make up their features.

The mast makes up a cross with the bow of the boat that carries its inhabitants towards their crucifixion.

How does the artist manage to say so much with his images? How does he know what to do?

Here is what Armin had to say about drawing out the story for Mediterraneo:"I finished the drawings for the fishstory. The idea was so clear that all I had to do was start at the beginning and go along, virtually copying the images in my mind. It has never before happened to me that a story has presented itself in a blinding flash, finished, complete, ready to go. And I doubt that it will again."

Sometimes with a few, very few chosen people, after well over a 100 years worth of consistently exorcising demons on paper, these people simply know how; and when they draw, all that they want to express, all that they feel, all those deep and powerful stories that kept them awake night after torturous night, beautifully and serendipitously fall into place, like during those auspicious alignments of stars and planets that make marvelous things happen mysteriously, ever so occasionally and just often enough.

In real life however, you wouldn’t give a person who made such powerful images a second glance. The artist could be just another grouchy, unassuming man of a certain age with a big moustache who just happened to be sitting at a corner table of a wine bar you visited somewhere during your travels.

The author has very kindly given me some of his drawings and sketches to use in this post along with some words about the subject.

On Drawing the Human Form -

I keep asking myself what lies behind good drawing. It has to do with practice. But if the hand now is more agile and obeys better to what I want it to do, my orders to it must have improved too. This, I think, is a matter of looking beyond the mere shape of a leg or a torso and seeing their essence, seeing how they feel.

When I taught life drawing I would get the models to behave like they would in a waiting room (the students would complain She has moved! I would reply This is live drawing!); I would get them to stand up and ask the students to draw them seated; I would get them to walk around; I would have a woman as a model and ask the students to draw last week’s male model instead. It was all designed to get the students to look and see and to understand the nature of what was in front of them, rather than to merely measure angles and curves and lengths.

When I draw someone I mentally assume the pose in which I draw that figure (this is automatic, sometimes I am not even aware of it). I feel where the stress is and where things are floppy. I feel the aches of the cheap chick who walks clumsily, like a kind of mild polio victim, knees slightly bent because the downward angle her ankles allow her feet to assume is not enough to compensate for the exaggerated height of her heels.

When I look at people it is as if I was I passing my hands over them; I feel the soft weight of the buttocks of a young woman in front of me, quivering ever so slightly as she is walking, so different from the tight arse of the bodybuilding macho imbecil who is doing hundredandfifty pushups; the tits of a young girl with their smooth silky skin and their curves - slightly concave the upper one, more convex the lower; the tired bits of flesh held in place and given the shape of breasts by a salmon coloured bra of an old woman with tinted hair and excessive makeup. I fondle these anatomies, I palp and squeeze and stroke them, I even smell them, sometimes with pleasure, sometimes with a shudder. And that, in the end, is what I draw.

Friday, January 12, 2018

An illustration I did towards the end of last year for The Indian Quarterly was for a story called The Circle, featuring the last of the Anglo Indians, the prejudices inherent in them and how it ultimately destroys them.The print has turned out a bit darker than the original, so I am adding the complete original below along with a detail of the illustration.

The haunting story which makes us cringe at the extent of prejudice and perceived superiority that one community has for another reminds me of the remark made by a friend of mine after she had broken up with her Anglo-Indian fiancee. She said, "How long are these Anglo-Indians going to prefix "Anglo" to define themselves? They are Indians!" This is true of course, but try telling that to Anglo-Indians, you'd probably make them writhe in agony.

Once, some years ago, during coffee an Anglo Indian acquaintance of mine remarked that the father of her niece was a Malayalee. When I expressed surprise, my acquaintance hastily added, "But she (the niece) is not Malayalee! She is one of us! She is one of us!" I was perplexed at the absurdity of that remark and at the determination of my Anglo-Indian acquaintance to completely erase the Indian aspect from her family.

Some explanation for these mindsets can be found in William Dalrymple's The White Mughals and more briefly in City of Djinns.

Here are a couple of memorable quotes from City of Djinns -

'And they're a fascinating people, the Indians. I'll say that for them.'

I've always had friendly relations with them, mind. It's their country. That's what my father always used to say.'

'That's right. The Indians are a nice people. Provided you treat them as human beings.'

Saturday, January 6, 2018

This illustration is the last illustration I did in
2017. It is for a Jim Corbett book cover.

The last time I drew a tiger was sometime in 2009 for Deccan
Herald when I used to do illustrations for their kiddie section. The pay was so
low, the stories were so trite that the work became a chore. I decided to move
on to other things. The picture below was the final illustration I did for them for a very
nice poem. It was a good way to end, the 2009 tiger, sweet faced and hopeful.

Since then I have certainly moved on and in 7 years I have
tried my hand at all kinds of wonderful projects which I never even dreamt I
would do. However once
again the red lights are flashing around my head and there are sirens in my
ears every time I take up an editorial or a cover. It is time to move on again,
this time to solving far more complex puzzles on my table and at my own pace.

Wednesday, November 15, 2017

There is one art director who absolutely knows what to do with the styles of different illustrators. She brings out the best in each of us. This cover was particularly challenging since we were figuring things out as I went along with her suggestions. I wasn't quite sure what she wanted or had in mind and after many attempts at getting it right I wasn't even sure if what I had done had sufficed. I spent sleepless nights.Then when the cover design with my illustration arrived in my inbox, I was pleased by how striking it was. It is therefore with great pleasure that I am showing it off over here.

I swear to God, if I were someone else, I would have bought a copy of this print. I cannot get over how good the quality is and how beautiful they've
turned out. I am just so happy when I look at them.Many many thanks to Honeycomb printers and to this wonderful artist for telling me about these printers who made this possible.

THE LOVERS

11.5 inches x 9.5 inches

Fine Art Print on Enhanced Matte paper

Rs.2,500 (USD 39)

Postage and handling add Rs.500 within India and USD 15 for
international shipping.

Wednesday, November 8, 2017

I received this charming email from Iceland thanking me upon receiving the prints.

Halló Priya,
the prints just arrived, thank you so much! Such a nice surprise! They are just wonderful. Our humble rural postman was very impressed by the number of stamps, he never delivered anything coming from that far away ;-)